U.S. Department of the Treasury

Supports United States Department of the Treasury, directing national fiscal management and selected incentive financing programs.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury is the federal Cabinet department responsible for fiscal policy, revenue collection, and economic stewardship. Its grant-related work is concentrated in the CDFI Fund, a Treasury bureau established in 1994, and in the Office of Small Business Programs through the State Small Business Credit Initiative. Treasury has a large community-finance footprint rather than a technology-development mandate, including more than $8 billion awarded across non-tax-credit CDFI Fund programs, about $81 billion in New Markets Tax Credit authority, and roughly $3 billion in bond guarantees.

Treasury's main funding tools are the CDFI Program, Native Initiatives, Capital Magnet Fund, Bank Enterprise Award Program, the Small Dollar Loan Program, New Markets Tax Credit, and SSBCI 2.0. The primary applicants are Certified CDFIs, nonprofit housing organizations, FDIC-insured depository institutions, Native CDFIs, and state and territory governments. SSBCI alone is a $10 billion pass-through structure, which places Treasury in a capital-intermediation role rather than a direct research-grant role.

The department's approach is built around place-based finance, housing, lending capacity, and community development, not emerging-technology R&D. That distinction matters: companies looking for research, prototype, or commercialization support need NSF, DOE, NIH, DARPA, or NIST, while Treasury is the right federal door for community lenders, affordable-housing finance, and small-business credit programs tied to underserved markets.